128 Music Conservation--a New Movement?

Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, June 17, about President Reagan’s funeral:

One of the things not sufficiently remarked upon the past week: The music, from California to Washington and back to California again, was old music, old American music, and it was beautiful. We have abandoned so much of the core of American music. And then a state funeral comes and the death of a president, and suddenly we are allowed to hear the old songs. "Going Home," the hymn they played for FDR as they took him from Warm Springs, Ga., to Washington. All the stanzas of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"--"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea." "The Navy Hymn," also known as "Eternal Father Strong to Save." "Abide With Me." "Ave Maria"--a great song of the Catholic Church, and yet they don't play it unless it's a special person's wedding or a special person's funeral.

This music is part of our patrimony, every bit as much as the trees and mountains. Our children, in our civic life, have for a generation been denied these songs. The moral and artistic equivalent of river polluters have decided we need to hear--I don't know, what songs do they play now in school, at events? "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"?
We need a new environmental movement--a musical conservation movement aimed at saving and preserving the old songs. The rivers and mountains and plains are so beautiful and need saving. But what have you lost if you lose the sound of your ancestors' souls singing? Even more, I think.”

Oh, to be able to sing from a hymn book again and not look at just the impoverished words thrown on a screen.